There was a comment below on Indian American ethnicity in terms of proportion. By “ethnicity,” I mean the dominant language-based groups which serve as the organizing unit of many Indian states. The usual figures I see quoted are that 50% of Indian Americans are Gujarati, 25% Punjabi, with the balance a host of other groups (e.g., Bengalis, Tamils, Assamese, etc.). Digging around, I found these data:

These data are from the United States Census’ American Community Survey. Here are the results where I simply removed the English speakers from the sample:

Language

%

Ratio with India %

Hindi

29.2

0.71

Gujarati

15.7

3.5

Punjabi

11.11

3.53

Telugu

10.8

1.32

Tamil

7.4

1.26

Malayalam

6.8

2.11

Urdu

3.8

0.75

Marathi

3.4

0.49

Bengali

2.4

0.30

Kannada

1.9

0.51

From these data, it looks like I was wrong, South Indians may very well be more than 25% of the Asian Indian population. The idea that 3/4 of American Asian Indians are Punjabi or Gujarati seems refuted by these data. Many Gujaratis and Hindu Punjabis raise their children speaking Hindi, which is in any case very closely related to these languages, but even if you assume that the whole of the 29% who speak Hindi at home are Gujarati or Punjabi you only get 56% for these two groups. As it is, though immigrants from the core Cow Belt states where Hindi is the official language are almost certainly underrepresented among Asian Indians, some of the 29% are going to be from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and so forth. Urdu is sister language of Hindi which is spoken by South Asian Muslims, so that allows us to peg the low bound for the proportion of Asian Indians who are Muslims (many Muslims do not speak Urdu, but speak the language of their region).

The main caution I would offer about these data is that they are of Indian immigrants, and so skew toward more recent migration waves. I am willing to bet that Punjabis and Gujaratis were far less well represented among the migrants of the 1965-1980 period. Many of their children are not immigrants by definition, as they were born in this country, and a great number of these would speak English at home. Since about 25% of American Asian Indians are native-born adding these would change the results above if their proportions were different, though I think the snapshot of the first-generation immigrant community serves as a good first approximation. I believe that adding the native-born Asian Indians would reduce the proportion of Punjabis and Gujaratis further, so I simply don’t believe the .quoted statistics anymore.

Addendum: 7.4% of Asian Indians do not speak any of the languages listed above at home (including English). So in this 7.4% you will find Assamese, Oriya, Tulu, and so on.

Comments

A crude way to estimate the Indian xtian population
is 80% of Malayalam speakers, + 10% of tamil and 10% of telugu speakers + 10% of kannada speakers

About 7% of NRIs are Xtians

Due to Arya Samaj movement, there was
a language split between punjabi sikhs and punjabi hindus
with punjabi hindus declaring hindi as their language

A good deal of the 29% hindi speakers , maybe half are punjabi hindus

All the punjabi speakers are sikhs

All Indian muslims except in kerala and tamil nadu
declare urdu as their language
And most of them lack the higher ed skills to come to US
and go to gulf

So 3.8% is most likely the upper bound of the Indian muslim population

The bengali Indian population is mostly hindu, 2.2%
and my guess of less than 5% was accurate
Bengali muslims tend to be from bangladesh
the socio-economic status of bengali muslims in India is among the lowest, thanks to commie rule

All Indian muslims except in kerala and tamil nadu
declare urdu as their language

this isn’t true. i mean, it isn’t true in west bengal where 30% of the population is muslim but most are bengali speakers. doesn’t effect indian americans much though because there aren’t that many bengalis, and the vast majority of indian bengali immigrants are hindu (way more than 70%). you can tell caste origin of bengalis pretty easily by surname i think. sen = brahmin, sarka = kayastha.

ok, i went to the census india site. you can find out languages spoke in states, and religion. assuming that every urdu speaking person in gujarat is a muslim, about 1 out of 9 in gujarat speak urdu. some of the other states it looks plausible that urdu is the language, but with the assumptions above (assume that all urdu speakers are muslim), 4 out of 9 muslims speak urdu in uttar pradesh, and 11 out of 16 muslims in bihar. so it seems like it is really not a good first approximation to assume what you did above (i’m actually totally surprised by uttar pradesh, but hindi vs. urdu is kind of a political an symbolic thing anyway since most of the masses speak local dialects anyway).

When the british left,
the literacy in native states was 11% and in areas under
direct british rule was only 6%

Starting in the 1920s, CP.Ramaswamy Iyer, the dewan
of Travancore, in kerala, started a mass literacy program
In addition, the xtian church, 20% of kerala, had a literacy program, with the result, that kerala became literate
way back in 1955, before the commies took over in 1957

In west bengal the commies banned english from govt schools
until a few years ago
In west bengal, only party apparatchiks get hired as govt school teachers
As far as the muslims of west bengal,
the commies have a deal with the mullahs,
vote for us, and you can keep your community backward in the 7th century

The usual figures I see quoted are that 50% of Indian Americans are Gujarati, 25% Punjabi,

They got the numbers mixed up. As shown conclusively by a wide survey of Bollywood movies, India is 50% Punjabi, 25% Gujarati, and the rest are English-speaking Mumbaites, hazel-eyed Muslims, and a handful of those dark-skinned fellows who apparently also live in the country.

Is there some way to compare the different waves of Indian immigration that you alluded to?

Indians I’ve met from who came to the US in the 1960s seem to be of diverse provenance (they’re from all over and not just Gujus or Sikhs) and speak English well with a good accent.

On the other hand, all the newcomers I meet, whether they work for a franchise or in software, have terrible grammar and thick accents. And maybe it’s from looking at the newcomers, that you got the idea that 50% are Gujarati and 25% Punjabi?

The first wave came in the 1960s
and consisted of MDs and Scientists
This was rather small

The second wave came in the 1970s and was family reunification of above

The third wave came by F1-scholarship, TA/RA
( those who scored over 1350 in GRE verbal and math )
( IQ > 140 )
In this wave, from South India, about 70% were brahmins
and went into silicon valley with MS and PhD

Based on the stellar field reputation of above
1975-1990,
the H1-B ripoff started

The H1-B are mostly BSEE and consists of a large number
of affirmative action castes, non-fluent in english,
and no longer markedly superior talent